The Poignancy of Loss

About a week ago, a soldier told me that he didn't like that his girlfriend takes sleeping pills. I asked him why. He told me that he had a friend who killed himself (either intentionally or unintentionally) with sleeping pills. A couple of weeks before that point, his friend had suggested that they get together, but this soldier didn't have time. My solder friend still carries the grief of the "What if..."

He knows that God is sovereign over life and death, and ultimately, his friend died when God willed for him to die. That precious life was not his to save. Even so, there is something about missing the opportunity to see someone before their death that is grievous.

I had a similar experience to my friend. One of my college friends killed herself by taking pills (either intentionally or unintentionally). A few weeks prior, we had promised each other that we would do coffee--an appointment that would never be kept.

I think we all wish we could have final words with a loved one who has died, even if we can't save them. I remember a nightmare I had a couple of years after another friend of mine died of cancer. I was walking down a path at night, holding her body, crying for help. I went from place to place, knowing that if only I could get help, she would be saved. But no one answered.

In those experiences (amongst many others), I learned to draw close to the dead and dying, not shy away. I would challenge you all to do the same. Death scares us and makes us incredibly sad. We feel utterly helpless to prevent the devastation that is about to fall on a host of loved ones, including ourselves.

If you know someone who is walking through death's dark shadow, spend time with them. Share with them the joy of precious events experienced together. Tell the inside jokes. Make sure to tell them everything you love about them. Do not be scared to hug them or be affectionate. For many, you can even talk about death: its shadow and the Light that can pierce it. And learn. We lose our lives in running from death; We gain them in embracing it.

My friend, Chelle, made this point to me one of the final times I saw her. We were talking when she sudden became distracted by the shaking of nearby tree by the breeze. "That is so beautiful," she said, "I would have never noticed it before."

Remember, Christ not only weeped at the tomb of Lazarus--He then raised him from the dead. Death loses its power when you find yourself held in the hand of the Good Shepherd. You no longer shout unheard words into a lonely night. God, with Word and Spirit, and then in everlasting glory--He answers.

A Note From a Soldier...

"... Secondly, your "No BS" Bible Study intrigues me.  I will try and attend.  There have been times in my life when I have been extremely active in church and church services.  I even was a praise and worship leader for a little over a year for a Nazarene Church in London, OH playing acoustic guitar and singing.  My experience has had an ugly ending in two separate occasions, keeping me very guarded with getting involved in much of anything anymore.  However, I still feel God tugging at my heart from time to time, no matter how hard I try and block Him out. When people ask me about my "relationship" with Jesus, I generally say, "It's a love hate/relationship, but a relationship none the less."  I don't consider myself a religious person anymore or a so called church goer. But real people talking about real life interests me.

I'm not real sure why I feel the need to share this with you other than you are honestly the first Army Chaplain to cross my path that is very genuine.  I appreciate your willingness to get down in the dirt with the likes of us that swear, drink, etc. and you seem to be the kind of guy that speaks truth without sugar coating anything.  I get burned out on the same religious bullshit that most "trendy" churches tend to dish out.  God is good, life is good, Jesus loves you, etc.  Though those things may be true, it's not what I need."

 

There is so very much I appreciate about this email. Of course, it's encouraging for me to know that God is blessing His ministry here, especially as it pertains to this soldier. But this soldier also represents a significant segment of folks in our society who are burned out on cliches, easy answers, and feel-good religion. It sounds like he doesn't want a "religious experience" or something that makes him feel good about himself--he wants real truth that deals with real life in a real world. He sounds like one of the thousands of hipsters in downtown Seattle who are flocking to no BS, Gospel-preaching churches.

 

I admire this young NCO tremendously. His baby girl was born about a month and a half ago and he was able to use his pass to go home and be with his wife, one year old boy, and baby. He sent me a picture from the hospital room. His little girl was asleep on his chest and he was staring down at her. When he got back, I told that his little girl is beautiful. He said "No...she's perfect."

 

As with most of my soldiers, strenuous work and dark moments for this soldier are easily eclipsed by a question about his kids. They stir hardened hearts with joy. For them, he goes off to war with the hope that, for them, he will return with peace.

Ahoy, Convoy!

Well, I experienced my first convoy today in order to visit a good portion of our unit in a separate post on the other side of the city. (Intentionally being vague as this blog isn't secure.)

I will not say much about riding in a convoy, other than the fact that the risk is minimal and folks are constantly vigilant. A pretty surreal environment.

On the other end of that journey, I saw dozens of soldiers that I haven't seen in weeks. It was a happy reunion with lots of small talk about families, working conditions, and living conditions. Folks over there are doing very well. I will try to visit them on a semi-frequent basis, as did the last chaplain. In the meantime, I try to close the distance with my unit blog, sustainedbyforce.blogspot.com.

On more rare occasions, I will travel by other means to locations further away in the country to visit small groups of our soldiers in more isolated locations. Again, this is all quite safe and is normal fare for the chaplain in attending to soldiers.

Tomorrow is our first "No BS BS (Bible Study)." We will discuss "The Gospel According to Abel: More Than Murder." Should be a fun time!

As always, your prayers are coveted. The God who makes His Gospel to prosper in an arena such as this is the same God who makes it to prosper in your own neighborhood. May He be glorified!

Drive-by Discussions

Each day, I try to visit a different section of my the portion of our unit that is on the post. As this post is so compact, any visit of this sort becomes an adventure. I walk down alleyways and duck through doorways that seem to appear out of nowhere. This maze of a post gave the previous chaplain headaches, but as I am my dad's son, it gives me a thrill. It feels like a giant fort.

Today, when I arrived at one of our sections, the group there seemed ready to talk about fun issues. I got started with the commander of the section and an Albanian officer, who were talking about religious issues in Albania. (We concluded that, using Western vernacular, the Albanian is a universalist, though he is a Muslim by culture and feels most comfortable in an Orthodox church).

As we were talking, a discussion erupted behind me, prompted by one soldier friend of mine saying that because of his ordeal with Christian cults in the past, he doesn't go to church. Another soldier spoke up and said that one who claims to be a Christian should still go to church, while another soldier used the common "where two or more are gathered" lines to make the point that church is wherever you have Christian fellowship. It took me a few minutes to extract myself from the first conversation to join the second.

I jumped in and told them that church is not where two or more are gathered, but where the Gospel is faithfully preached and the sacraments faithfully administered. I made a quick distinction between the invisible church (the body of believers) and the visible church (preaching/sacraments). Ultimately, God's has appointed under-shepherds to guide His flock this side of heaven. Simply gathering with fellow believers is not enough.

One gal made the point that you don't have to go to church every week to be a Christian, and there are many hypocrites who go to church every week but don't do anything to help people in their community. I said "Amen" to both of those things, but I reminded her that Christians are not called to do good deeds before the eyes of men (and make themselves self-righteous Pharisees). Also, it is true that you don't need to go to church to be a Christian, but it means that in practice, we're confessing Jesus as our Savior but not as our Lord, because He actively leads us using the preaching/sacraments.

Someone made the unfortunately slip about being a good person, which is a bad move in our unit (as most of the soldiers know), because I inevitable roar "None of us are good and I am the most sinful and damn-worthy of us all." A Roman Catholic civilian (who I had just met) jumped in and asked "Are you saying I'm not a good person?" "Sorry, my man, I said. Even our good deeds are like filthy rags before God. Our good morals are merely baggage we carry with us to Hell apart from Christ." We had to break for work, but folks are preparing conversation starters for my return.

The wonderful thing about this discussion, like many others, is despite the rhetoric and sensitive topics, they are not heated in the least. My soldiers love these discussions, in part because we've created a "No BS" culture within our unit. People aren't allowed to be offended. They can disagree and explain why. So, I tell my soldiers, if you think Christianity is crap, tell me so--just be prepared for me to ask "Why?" and challenge you.

So tonight, four of us (of three different races) gathered at a table for dinner to discuss the problem of the inner city, cycles of violence and poor education, the breakdown of the family structure, the corrupting influence of entitlements, personal responsibility, and the way ahead. We all had very different backgrounds and all brought something to the table, and it was a heck of a conversation.

In an age of contrived "dialogue" where people can share views, but not sharpen them against others, one's ability to reason is inevitably diminished. But allow people to truly discuss issues--to challenge, be challenged, and thoughtfully reflect--and you have the intellectual dance that makes for greater entertainment than any of the technological distractions we typically rely on. And set this dance before the light of the Gospel, and the sweet silhouettes of truth gain the beauty of eternal meaning!

A Spiritual Wuss!

We often wear blinders with regard to our psychological and spiritual frailties. Even when we want to navigate the murky waters of our own hearts, we find it difficult to traverse them.

It is not quite so difficult with our physical frailties. Eventually, they will find us out. For example, I know my legs are fairly strong, as I run quite a bit. I have done a decent number of pushups over the past couple of months, so I knew I was doing alright in the chest and triceps. My core is not the strongest, but situps have kept me fairly fit in that area.

"Surely my shoulders and biceps are strong," I told myself, as they used to be some of muscles I worked the most (years ago). Yet, I have now had numerous Cross Fit classes reveal to me that I can do less pullups than some of my female counterparts. I will work hard to remedy this quickly (so I'm not left hanging from the pullup bar in exhaustion again!), but for the time being, as it pertains to shoulders and biceps, I am a wuss.

What I appreciate about the easier exposure of physical frailties is that they clue us into the fact that we have more complex psychological and spiritual frailties that we're often missing.

God wrestled me down to the mat once and for all in the summer before my freshman year of high school by initially exposing my physical frailties. I went on a bike trip with a youth group from Washington DC to Nags Head, NC. Close to 500 miles in about six days. To that point, I had been in lots of fights and brawls and thought of myself as pretty tough. 500 miles of biking quickly diasbused me of that notion, as girls who were even smaller than me pedaled past me over and over, ringing their little bells and shouting "Good job!" (which wasn't encouraging to me).

Over the course of that trip, as I pedaled mile after mile, I had plenty of time to think about my physical weakness and how that was analogous to my spiritual weakness. I was not a victim of my broken upbringing, nor was I a conquerer of my past. If I had physical limitations, what about spiritual? What about my sinful nature, which was clearly before my eyes? What hope did I have before a just and holy God whose standard was infinitely more daunting than a bike trip?

In my physical brokenness, I embraced my spiritual brokenness. And in my spiritual brokenness, I was embraced by the Healer of hearts broken by sin, Jesus Christ.

I have lived more than half my life since that point. Yet it was then that I truly started living. I joke with people (to my wife's great displeasure) that with my last birthday, I had reached the halfway point in my life. Where I live that long or longer, I have enjoyed a blessed life. Even a minute of my life in Christ has made every day I have walked upon this earth a meaningful one.

Off to meet with a fellow chaplain and then conduct some counseling!

FYI, I have re-launched my unit blog at sustainedbyforce.blogspot.com if any of you want to take a peak at the sermon summaries, thoughts of the day, and updates I give my soldiers around the country.

Back to Africa

My thoughts can only avoid Africa for so long before they are foisted once more toward the dark and mysterious continent. I am now 400+ pages into Rick Atkinson's tome on the African portion of WWII, An Army at Dawn, which is a spellbinding account of American combat naivete being shaped into the hardened resolve that would win that great war. I also just received my first package from home, sent from my sister. She sent me a book entitled The Lower River, which is a fictional account a man returning to a country he loved from his Peace Corps years (Malawi), now that his marriage has fallen apart.

I look forward to reading this book and once more visualize the barren hilltops (similar to Afghanistan), hear the earthy song-singing, and smell the village fires, as my wife recently wrote about on her blog for an international ministry: http://www.haventoday.org/all-about-jesus-blog/where-is-your-home-46.html.

I have enjoyed some classic works on Africa: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. And as David Livingstone is one of my heroes, I have read several biographies of his travels through Africa. I also have read a number of accounts of African genocide: God sleeps in Rwanda by Joseph Sebarenzi, Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza, and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.

Looking to scratch my Malawi itch several months ago, I found the obscure book, The Warm Heart of Africa, by Kevin Denny. This book was one of my best reading finds in years. It is the actual account of an early Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, witnessing the mingled joy and suffering of the people and experiencing the difficulties posed by the great culture gap. She was there when Malawi achieved her independence and met an elderly Malawian man, who over time shared with her his life story, beginning with his father almost killing David Livingstone. This man's story is one of the most incredible accounts I have ever read or heard.

There is something to be said for life beyond the reaches of comfort and security. Of course, that life can be found at the neighbor's doorstep as often as it can on the other side of the globe.

Suffering is not the great bain of human existence, but in all its forms--poverty, persecution, existential angst, etc--is simply a manifestation of the great bain of human existence: mankind's rebellion against the Creator. But that suffering can be imbued with joy when the sin that midwived it into this world is found nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ. This lesson is heard in the gentle footsteps and rolling melodies of the Malawian child, hair discolored and stomach bloated from malnutrition, who knows that one dawning day, his night-borne sorrows will be made eternal joy.

This is why the blood pumping through Malawi, "The Warm Heart of Africa," beats through me.